I enjoy sharing with people my dynamic life. Here I will share my projects, experiences, and ideas. I normally update a couple times a week, so check back often!

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

QuickBooks POS Program Bug

Ever used QuickBooks Point of Sale and found that some of your inventory is wrong for some strange reason? Ever have to pay $50 for tech support only to be told it's all your fault, even though you can't possibly see how it can be? This is a common problem with QBPOS users that Intuit seems to be ignoring. Through investigating the matter, I have concluded the problem lies within the QBPOS program code itself.

The QBPOS holds two copies of every bit of information in the database. When you make changes to the database and save, a copy of the old data is created within the database. It works like a backup, and perhaps that's the purpose of having two copies. However, flaws in the program's code can cause this old data to overwrite the new data. Nobody can know for sure exactly what makes the program do this except for Intuit's programmers. Unfortunately, Intuit doesn't seem to be too connected to their customers. Nobody wants to pay a big tip to get tech support who, by the way, would know nothing about the problem. They're job is to assume it's something you're doing. It's not.

This bug is a serious problem for companies that want to maintain an accurate point of sale system, but continue to see their data being manipulated incorrectly by the program itself. The part that makes this worse is Intuit knows about this problem. It's been reported by dozens of people on their public forums. The problem has existed in their software for several years, but it has yet to be resolved. Proof of this is a print-out of inventory I have after saving and backing up the data. Days later after the print-out, some prices went back to their old values mysteriously. Try it yourself if you're having issues. It's the only way you can prove there's a problem. Intuit's program doesn't have a "feature" to do this. If you call their tech support, be sure to let them know about this blog post because they're not listening. In the meantime, there are other alternatives to QuickBooks Point of Sale.